


Family, Version 4.0

by laniew1



Series: Version, Update [2]
Category: Ringer (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-25
Updated: 2011-10-25
Packaged: 2017-10-24 23:14:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/268969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laniew1/pseuds/laniew1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The way things are now, that’s most likely Andrew’s fault.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Family, Version 4.0

**Family, Version 4.0**

  
He only has himself to blame; that’s what he tells himself.

The stiffness in the air, the fact that Bridget hides herself in the room that no one had slept in since she’d come into their lives masquerading as her sister.

These things are all his fault.

He could have left well enough alone, could have accepted this new version of Siobhan, could have fallen back in love with this new version of the wife that he’d thought he was only months away from filing papers against.

He could have kissed her and touched her and let her stay in his bed, let her curl around him and eventually when she was comfortable, when it had been long enough he would have made love with her.

There would have been a child, and he certainly wouldn’t have been wondering the probability of it being anyone other then his. Bridget in the guise of Siobhan had very firmly shut Henry out even as she’d kept Andrew pulled tight against her.

Like she thought to honor her sister by saving the marriage that her sister had been all but flushing down a drain.

Juliet bites her lip and her eyes go to the door.

In just a few short days she’s become used to eating breakfast across the table from Siobhan. Andrew had told her just as soon as they’d returned that the woman that has been living with them is Siobhan’s sister instead and she’d given him that look. The one that was just short of rolling eyes and a sarcastic ‘ _I know, dad_.’

Juliet likes Bridget, she’d liked Bridget when she’d been pretending to be Siobhan and she’d known, like Andrew had known, that someone’s habits and demeanor and _person_ don’t change overnight without an extreme head injury first.

  


******************************************************************************

  
The FBI has a presence downstairs, their doorman has a list and he checks them off as they leave and return. He feels like he’s in boarding school again and half waits to be told of a curfew that a grown man shouldn’t have.

******************************************************************************

  
He taps softly on the bedroom door and waits. There’s silence first, then a rustling that sounds like some shifting in bed.

He doesn’t open the door and enter the room, Bridget is not his wife and he thinks that if they’re going to return to the normalcy that they’d been living in someone needs to break the tension that fills the air of the penthouse.

“Come in?” he hears, it’s soft, like Bridget is hoping that whoever has knocked has already given up and turned to walk away and won’t hear it.

Andrew is tenacious though, he’s given her almost a week, now it’s time to figure out what they’re going to do.

He turns the handle on the door and pushes it open, entering the room to see that Bridget is curled up on the bed and she’s pale and looks tired.

“Is that one of my t-shirts?” he says, he can’t stop himself because it’s one of the t-shirts that he wears to the gym, it hadn’t returned when laundry came back so he’d assumed that it had been beyond wearing and had been tossed. He hadn’t realized that Bridget had appropriated it.

“It’s soft,” she says, she bites her lip and doesn’t meet his eyes, there’s some primitive, primal part of him that he normally keeps buried that feels some measure of satisfaction that she’s wearing his clothing. He pushes the door closed as he enters and waits to hear the click of it shutting. He doesn’t lock it, no need for Bridget to think that he’s trapping them in here together, though he thinks that he’d like nothing more.

Things were simpler, he thinks, when he thought he was falling back in love with his more-then-difficult wife, not her twin sister.

  


******************************************************************************

  
“Juliet thinks that you’re angry at her,” he says, he sits on a corner of the bed and folds his hands together in his lap. He looks at a painting that adorns one of the walls, it’s one that he and Siobhan had bought together on one of their first trips overseas, they’d been in love and happy.

It surprises him slightly that she’d put that painting in this room that was her sanctuary from him.

“I’m not,” Bridget says softly, she sounds stricken and when he looks over he can see that she _is_ stricken by the thought. She looks horrified that Juliet might thinks she’s angry.

“I just thought,” Bridget starts. “I didn’t want to… I’m not Siobhan,” she says helplessly, like she thinks they don’t know that already.

“I think you are under some sort of mistaken belief that Juliet and your sister had any sort of relationship besides confrontational,” Andrew says, he reaches out one hand and lets it fall just inches from where Bridget’s legs are curled up under the blankets.

“Siobhan is her step-mother,” Bridget says, “I’m… well I’m so far away from being step-mom or mom material that it’s… well I’m honestly not sure how you guys thought I was Siobhan for so long.”

“We didn’t,” Andrew says, he shifts his hand and lays it over top of what he thinks are her crossed ankles. “While Juliet and I may have bought into the idea, we neither one were able to ignore the types of differences that would lead us to the conclusion that there was something amiss.”

“Is that why you called Agent Machado?” she asks softly. “If you just wanted to unmask me as an imposter and get rid of me, why…” she waves a hand around.

“I don’t want to get rid of you, Bridget,” he says just as softly. “That was never my intent; I want to protect you to the best of my abilities. I want to be able to look at you and say ‘hello Bridget, how was your day’ and if that meant inviting the FBI into our home for even a short while to make sure that you were safe and kept safe, then so be it.”

“This isn’t our home,” Bridget says. “This is _your_ home, with _my sister_.”

Andrew sighs, and that is the crux of the problem, isn’t it.

  


******************************************************************************

  
Bridget is curled up in one corner of the couch, Juliet in the other. Andrew doesn’t think that they realize that he’s left his study and is standing in one darkened corner of the hallway watching and listening to them.

“I hope she’s not dead,” Bridget is saying.

“Well, you’d feel it, right?” Juliet says. “I mean twin-bond and all that, right?”

Bridget laughs a little, it sounds bitter and a little sad. “Siobhan and I didn’t, we weren’t like that.”

“Twins?” Juliet sounds amused.

“No, we were, _are_ twins. We didn’t have any sort of bond like that, we were close when we were young, but when we got older, well…”

“You liked different stuff, started to lead different life-styles?”

“Yeah, I’m not nearly as strong as Siobhan is, she pulled herself up and out of the gutter and I kind of… well I kind of wallowed in it, it was the only thing I knew. The only friends I had were there and once Siobhan got herself out, well she always said she’d get me out too.”

“But she never did,” Juliet sounds knowing.

“No, she did,” Andrew straightens and he can see the arch of Juliet’s back do the same, that’s not something that he’d thought Siobhan would do. “I didn’t _want_ her to get me out. She tried again, right after she met your dad, told me that she’d help me, get me out, get me into a rehab program, help me start my life fresh.”

“You didn’t want her help?”

Bridget huffs a small laugh. “I was so firmly addicted to the stuff I was on,” Andrew can see her head shake. “And I knew that she was only offering because she was embarrassed by me. I thought; she’s trying to get me cleaned up and respectable so her new family isn’t completely embarrassed by her old one and I wasn’t having any of that. The she told me if I didn’t do it, if I didn’t go into a program, _any_ program, that she was done with me. And I told her to go fuck herself and she said that she no longer had a sister and that was it.”

“Bridget,” Juliet says softly.

“She came when I needed her, so I hoped she wasn’t as done with me as she’d said she was, but then…” Bridget says, she wipes a hand under her eyes and Juliet reaches across the couch to touch her arm.

“We can talk about something else,” Juliet says. “Or we can turn the TV on, put a movie in.” She glances over into the hallway and there’s an almost desperate look in her eyes.

Andrew waits a moment, lets Juliet turn away to reach for the remote, lets Bridget wrap her arms around herself.

“I was thinking we could order Chinese, is anyone hungry?” he says as he walks into the room, they both look at him and he can see that Bridget’s eyes are a little red and Juliet looks pale.

He doesn’t expect an answer, but it would look odd if he didn’t ask, “Did I miss something?”

  


******************************************************************************

  
Bridget is eating with Juliet in the morning again, or Juliet is eating and Bridget is drinking tea while picking at a piece of toast.

Andrew doesn’t join them, that was Juliet’s time with Bridget and he’s loathe to force them to give it up. Even though he’d like nothing more than to sit there with them, listen as they talk through their plans for the day.

Bridget’s nodding to something that Juliet is saying when Andrew walks in, it’s a sunny Wednesday morning, it’s been almost three months since Bridget came into their lives, a little over two since they’ve actually been able to call her Bridget without fear of her running into the street, he’s tightening his tie and mentally rolling through his schedule for the day.

The toaster pops up and that has to be his bagel because Juliet has oatmeal and Bridget has toast, he looks over at the table and Juliet is smirking at him, Bridget has a small smile on her lips hidden mostly by her cup.

“Am I really that predictable?” he asks, even as he reaches for a plate, there’s cream cheese out and waiting because evidently they’ve heard him complain enough about cold cream cheese not being ideal to spread upon hot bagels.

“There’s nothing wrong with predictable,” Bridget says, her lips quirk and Andrew doesn’t know what possesses him. Maybe he _is_ possessed and that’s the problem.

He takes four steps to the table and ruffles Juliet’s hair as he presses a kiss to the top of Bridget’s head. He takes a step back and Bridget leans her head back to see him, across the length of the table Juliet is running her fingers through her hair attempting to set it to rights. Watching them closely.

He doesn’t believe that she would have any issues with him attempting to woo Bridget, he should probably broach the topic with her though.

And sooner rather than later, he thinks.

“Good morning, Andrew,” she says and there’s a light in her eyes that he doesn’t believe that he’s seen before.

“Good morning, Bridget,” he says, he runs a hand down the side of her head and she smiles at him.

  


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End file.
